Smart flow and
weighing technology means sweet process success
Solutions for accurate
control, easy maintenance, and remote diagnostics
Smart flow and
weighing technology means sweet process success
Solutions for accurate
control, easy maintenance, and remote diagnostics
Food & Beverages
ATP Union
CS 90137 France
Specialists in the centuries-old tradition of making candied fruit, APTUNION depends on modern Siemens instrumentation—from flow control to intuitive weighing technology—to ensure their sweet products meet the highest quality standards.
Candied fruit has been carefully made in the south of France’s Apt region for more than 700 years. With a range of dried and candied fruit products used in everything from baking and pastries to chocolate and cereals, the company APTUNION formed in 1962 when several family-owned confectionery manufacturers joined forces.
The company’s 250 workers at this facility in Apt produce 10,000 tons of product per year—sourced from more than 200 local farmers across Provence. A skilled team of specialists designs production lines that can be adapted to customer needs, manufacturing complex products that comply with the highest quality standards.
One
such production line makes fruit pieces (or fruit chips), which use a unique
process that sees fresh fruit purees of raspberry, apple, strawberry, or citrus
fruits textured with pectin and then dried. Pectin is a natural gelling agent made
from the skin of citrus fruits, rather than using additives like calcium.
Once
dried, cut into sizes from one millimeter to one centimeter, and packaged in
small to 10-kilogram bags, these fruit pieces are then shipped worldwide to manufacturers
of products such as chocolate, cereal bars and energy bars in more than 50
countries around the world.
APTUNION
recently undertook a project to create a new manufacturing facility,
modernizing their production center and moving machinery from one site to
another. Food safety certified BRC Grade AA, the new factory means the company could
double its production.
Among
the modernization efforts, technicians installed five SIWAREX WP321 weighing
modules, connected to a stainless steel SIWAREX DB digital box. This system
relays accurate and repeatable weight measurements directly to the control room
so operators have the information they need for each of the varied products
APTUNION produces.
The SIWAREX DB digital junction box excels in both retrofit or new-build applications—and paired with the SIWAREX WP321’s four-million-part analog-to-digital converter, the weighing system delivers high accuracy with the plant’s existing load cells.
“Without
needing external service from weighing specialist, our operators can control
the scales and ensure their proper functioning. We gain excellent process control across all of our recipes, meaning reduced
product loss from non-conformities in manufacturing.”
Florian Latournerie - Plant Manager
Because
SIWAREX DB combines the best of both worlds: the ability to retrofit the facility’s
analog load cells while still benefiting from the diagnostic information
available with digital load cells. The digital junction box’s features work
well in brownfield plant builds: technicians simply need to replace existing
junction boxes with SIWAREX DB instead of the more complicated—and expensive—task
of replacing mechanics or cables.
The
company also replaced its electromagnetic flow meters with five mass flow
meters, which avoid volume conversions during the continual dosing of gelling
agent and fruit in each recipe. And because the gelling agent is extremely
viscous, flow instruments need to ensure a certain flow rate with a high
viscosity amplitude.
One
of the most compact Coriolis flow sensors on the market, Siemens SITRANS FCS300
did just that—providing operators with precise measurements of gelling agents
to guarantee recipe control. The flow meters’ small size simplifies
installation and replacement, giving plant designers the ability to optimize factory
layout by fitting the multiple units into tight spaces.
These eyes and ears of the manufacturing process are connected to the brain of Siemens SIMATIC S7-1500 PLC, which all of APTUNION’s maintenance engineers were already trained on before the company embarked on this modernization project.
With improved preventative maintenance, these operators can assess and diagnose any load cell issues remotely—since they receive error reports for each connected load cell either centrally at the SIMATIC controller or on the local HMI panel.
